My players piss me off, becuase they never use their comrades. And, oh, how nice addition can they be for a squad. Let's think of a seargant for a moment.

With average and bigger squads of four or more players IMO seargant becomes a support beast, starting from 1st level. Any seargant can start with Get Them! Sweeping Order. It adds 4 damage points to attack supported by Comrade given range or melee order (I don't remember the names) for a command(0) test. Range order gives you +5 to BS, Melee - Ganging Up against any opponent (+10 to WS).

Now, if every PC issues one of those orders to their Comrades (why shouldn't they?), then every PC in squad is going to get those +4 damage. More than that, those points are ADDED. This means that usually they don't have to pierce through armor or TB and deliver 100% of pure harm to the enemy. For 4 PC's that's +16 damage on turn (seargant himself can also use it).

if you max out command you can issue that order almost every turn as free action. Then you can attack by yourself and utilize it or inspire your PC's to increase the chance of them succeeding (or hitting more targets if they're shooting bursts).

What do you think about it?

Also, how do you play giving orders? Do character players have to literally give orders on your sessions or they can just declare they give them?

I love seargant class, it was my first character and he made it till the end of the campaing (well almost, he commited suicide before the last scenerio, long story), even with only one other character utilising companion for normal fighting (others were operator in a hellhound tank and a crossover navigator from dark heresy so she didn't get any companion), he was a beast as a support and as a social character (we have a lot of social situations in our games even in OW).

But back to the topic.

It's their loss actually, why would anyone throw away a free +5 buff to WS and BS? That is just silly.

"Get them" is awesome in a squad where all of the players are infantry and fight using normal shooty-stabby weapons, but even if it works for only half of the members it still is very strong.

Hint a seargant to take "Heroic Inspiration" talent from Hammer of the Emperor, and for only half-action each turn with his high leadership skill he will give everyone +10 for the next action (be it fighting, operating a vechicle or whatever other they are doing).

Moreover if he takes "Trademark item" (Hammer of the Emperor as well) he can, once per encounter, issue two sweeping orders in one turn, for example at the start of the combat issue "Get them" and "Dig in" from the Commander advanced speciality - which is a must if seargant want's to be a buffer/social kind and not a full on tank.

With my group I gave each comrade a personality. Some times hole story archs came because of those comrades. Really it's your players loss, most players dnt read the rules , they seem to know rules around there characters and will jump at you if you get one wrong, but not there comrades. I would hint to your players that things like " well if you used your comrade ability you would have hit that target " Or " if you used this you could have done it". Quickly when they start failing they will use them more. Also then you can say " well comrade is dead, should have taken better care of it. Then you can add character to them.

You're right that the Sergeant is a support beast who is a huge force multiplier on the squad - but every Sergeant I've ever seen has tried to make themselves a jack-of-all trades character and in the process been basically useless.

Yeah, that's too easy to fall into as a sergeant. After all, you're still expected to be useful in ranged combat, and from your equipment you're also expected to deal with melee. Everyone also needs willpower against pinning, fear, etc. and as the sergeant you need to be smart and good at tactics.
So, your role really asks you to spread out, which works incredibly terribly in this game.

Get Them! is great, but for one thing, the damage is not added after reduction[1] and for the other, it's not very reliable. A starting sergeant will have, at best, a roughly 50% chance to successfully use that buff, and an experienced one will get that to maybe 75% - at which point it's reliable, but certainly not always on.

[1] "adds +4 Damage to the affected Melee or Ranged Attack" i.e. so you deal, say, 1d10+4 E from your weapon and +4 from Get Them! for a total of 1d10+8 E. Which is good, but not unbelievably good. Against something with high TB or armor it still doesn't do much, which I suspect is intentional.
An attack that only deals 1 point of damage due to Righteous Fury doesn't turn into 5 points of damage, either.

Yeah, that's too easy to fall into as a sergeant. After all, you're still expected to be useful in ranged combat, and from your equipment you're also expected to deal with melee. Everyone also needs willpower against pinning, fear, etc. and as the sergeant you need to be smart and good at tactics.

So, your role really asks you to spread out, which works incredibly terribly in this game.

Get Them! is great, but for one thing, the damage is not added after reduction[1] and for the other, it's not very reliable. A starting sergeant will have, at best, a roughly 50% chance to successfully use that buff, and an experienced one will get that to maybe 75% - at which point it's reliable, but certainly not always on.

[1] "adds +4 Damage to the affected Melee or Ranged Attack" i.e. so you deal, say, 1d10+4 E from your weapon and +4 from Get Them! for a total of 1d10+8 E. Which is good, but not unbelievably good. Against something with high TB or armor it still doesn't do much, which I suspect is intentional.

An attack that only deals 1 point of damage due to Righteous Fury doesn't turn into 5 points of damage, either.

But if you're shooting something with TB+AR=6, which is quite common, with 1d10+4 weapon, you deal 0-8 dam, with 9,5 dam on average, reduced by BT+AR=6. It's 9,5-6=3,5 damage in the end. By adding 4 to such weapon damage, you deal after reduction 7,5 dam, which is more than 200% increase! Your min and max damage also increases: to 3 and 12 pts!

Yes, but that's like my new religion. Fastest-growing in the world, don't you know?

That is to say, you start with so little, it's really easy to increase by 200%.

Like I said, it's good and useful but not amazing.

Actually it's not that easy. You can multiply attacks in many ways, but there aren't many ways to increase damage in OW. Doubling damage inflicted is worth more than additional attack, cause the latter can always miss.